Simon Chapman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney, has been taking a close look at a new report, prepared by Price Waterhouse Coopers for British American Tobacco, and has found it has more holes than a slab of Swiss cheese (or whichever metaphor you prefer).
He has given the report a big, fat F.
Chapman writes:
“Australia’s tobacco industry is having a major attack of the vapours following recommendations made by the government’s Preventive Health Task Force last year. Its chief concerns are with a proposal to push the price of a pack of cigarettes to $20 in two tax increases, bringing us into line with UK and Irish prices, but still around $3 behind Norway.
The other would see local industry internationally humiliated as being the first anywhere in the world to have to sell cigarettes in plain boxes with only the brand name to differentiate the products. Just like prescribed drugs have always been packaged. Local management don’t want that blight on their CVs.
The bogeyman of a booming black market in tobacco is the frontline of its attack on the tax rise. British American Tobacco has got out of the blocks in 2010 last Friday releasing a commissioned Price Waterhouse Coopers report on the use of illegal, tax-avoiding tobacco. I will be setting the report this year as an exercise in critical appraisal for my public health students. It is quite something.
